Rainy

No parking

This week was a pretty basic week, nothing too out of the ordinary. But it did rain a lot this week! Catching some of what I hear is becoming hurricane Alberto. Crazy, it seems pretty early to be having a hurricane...

So there has been an interesting development in the mission. We're getting rid of a lot of the "extra" rules that we had and sticking straight to the white handbook. Not too many details on exactly what is included in that, but one thing that has been made clear is the MUSIC rule! We can now listen to any music that conforms to these guidelines:

"Listen only to music that is consistent with the sacred spirit of your calling. Music should invite the Spirit, help you focus on the work, and direct your thoughts and feelings to the Savior. Do not listen to music that pulls your thoughts away from your work, merely entertains, has romantic lyrics or overtones, or dulls your spiritual sensitivity by its tempo, beat, loudness, lyrics, or intensity."

Anyone that would like to donate their favorite music to the Elder Stevenson Foundation would be greatly appreciated haha.

Perfect place to lock up

This week we had a good zone training about meaningful prayer and studies. I've already seen a difference in the way I prepare for prayer and studies, it's been really great. One of my takeaways was that I should treat prayer like an interview with the mission president, or even a Skype call, and get excited! I haven't seen my Father in almost 20 years, how should I feel to get to talk to Him? How would I prepare for that?

We had a zone wide exchange after the training, and I went to Fort Myers Creole with Elder Couillens. It was a fun day, definitely different than Immokalee, but I learned a lot from him. Elder Charles stayed here with Elder Lantor and they found a bunch of investigators, so that was cool.

Speaking of investigators, we had to drop one of our friends named M[...]. It was kinda depressing, our last lesson with her was pulling out all the stops to try to get her to understand that not just any church is good enough. We were as straight forward and bold as you can imagine, using only Scriptures from the Bible to show that the Great Apostasy happened and that the true church was restored (check out 1 Timothy 4:1-4 if you get the chance) ... but she still wasn't willing to act. It's sad seeing people that you've worked with for a little while fall away like that, but in the end it just strengthened my testimony that this truly is the only place that has and teaches all the truth.

Other than that, we only had 12 people at church on Sunday, 6 of them being us missionaries (Haitians hate rain, they believe it makes you sick) so we just had Sunday School and a short sacrament meeting and everyone went home haha.

That was pretty much it for this week. As of right now I only have 3 months left in my mission, crazy! Next week is transfers, we'll see what happens. I'm really trying to take as much advantage of this time as possible. Have a great week!

Soaking in the sun (literally)

Lanmou,
Eldè Stevenson

The Week of Weeks!

My poor bike

Hello everyone! So this week has still been pretty not normal you could say. First things first though this week is TRANSFERS. And I will be TRANSFERRING to the area of CYPRESS CREEK ENGLISH in the CORAL SPRINGS ZONE. My new companion will be ELDER MARSHALL. All the other elders here will be staying, and Elder Blood will be training! Definitely didn't expect this one, It'll be a lot different serving as just an English missionary, but the Lord needs me there for some reason so I'll just have to figure it out I guess. I haven't heard anything about the area other than apparently the ward meets in an old baptist church so that'll be interesting.

The weirdness of the week started off last p-day when we got in a crash! We were finally on our way "home" from the chapel and Elder Anderson was driving, and because of the hurricane there are traffic lights out. Well there was this one light that wasn't really a light because it was just for a school and is never on anyways, but a Mercedes 2 cars ahead of us decides to slam on his brakes to stop at it, which caused the mini cooper behind him to slam on his brakes, which caused Elder Anderson to slam on our brakes. And since we had all our stuff along with 4 guys in the car, we couldn't stop fast enough and we hit the back of the mini cooper. Everyone was fine, but our car got bashed pretty bad. Elder Anderson didn't get faulted either so that was good haha.

Our poor car

So then we didn't have a car, and we were living up with the cypress grove elders, Elder Wride and Elder Petersen, because our house still didn't have power. So the next day we tried biking down to do stuff in our area and I got the first flat tire of my mission! A 3 inch rusty screw went straight through my tire. So then I was out of a bike and we stuck with the other elders for the rest of the day.

The next day was Zone Conference, and President showed us his portfolio of pictures he took before his mission. He's an amazing photographer, really cool stuff. He's done photo shoots for some pretty big companies too. Even Disney! We also got a new car after zone conference so that was awesome. And I ate at steak and shake for the first time, which is kinda like the in-n-out of the east coast. Pretty good, not as good as in-n-out though.

We were finally able to go back to our house on Saturday. We have power, but the AC comes in and out still. Better than camping out in a chapel and living outside our area though. This weekend we also did more Mormon Helping Hands. We got in a work crew with the L.......s, the same family that took care of us during the hurricane. That was fun, they're an awesome family. But so many trees. After all this is over I will never need to touch another stick haha. It's exhausting work and there's so much to be done, but I'm glad to be able to help out these people. They're always so grateful for our help.

​Gotta get those yellow shirts!​

​Working in the rain!​

​Working hard or hardly working?

Speaking of that, this weekend is General Conference. However, the General Authorities have asked that we forego watching conference to do more Helping Hands. Kind of a bummer since I was kinda looking forward to a break, and General Conference is like super bowl weekend for missionaries haha. But, since I'll be transferring back to the east coast there's a good chance that I'll be camping (like, ACTUAL camping with TENTS) down in the KEYS to help clean up down there. The Keys got pretty wrecked so this isn't going to be much of a vacation but it'll be an interesting experience all the same. Somehow among all this I am still going to be doing missionary work, I'm expecting a bit of a rough transition at first but we'll see how it all pans out.

So as you can tell, things are really shaking up around here. Things will probably never be the same after this, but it's been a huge growing experience for me which I can really appreciate. Heavenly Father is really putting me, and putting all of us for that matter, to the test and I'm just going to keep making myself do those things that I don't want to do because I know there's a good reason for all of it. Just know that things are working out and are going to keep working out, and I just might be an even better person because of it hahaha. I love you all, thank you for your continued prayers and support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

No Clue...

​Our new group​

Hello everyone! This week was good, definitely different though.

Wednesday we had transfers, and it was kinda crazy getting everything worked out. The good thing is that we got to carpool with the zone leaders so we saved ourselves the, about, 200 miles it takes for us to get there and back. Now I'm living with Elder Blood, Elder Anderson, and his "sprout" Elder Rock. They're all good guys, it's definitely a different feel from last transfer and will take some adjustment for everybody I think. Now I'm the one that gets asked all the questions about the area, and quite frankly I still feel like I have no clue what I'm doing haha...

We had our English class and Georvensky (that's how he said it's spelled) came! It was pretty fun, we got to answer his questions and then got into a conversation about the church and Joseph Smith. He's kinda the type that says "I don't see why it matters what church I go to if they all talk about Jesus Christ." That concern can either be really easy or really hard to overcome. Later in the week we came by and ended up sharing about the Plan of Salvation with him, and he seemed to really like that. Unfortunately he didn't come to church like he said he would and didn't answer his phone, so we're gonna have to figure out what happened there. Our other person committed to church didn't come either, he said that either him or a family member was sick and he couldn't come. We'll be going by tonight for another lesson and to give him a baptismal date, so hopefully all goes well!

Open House for missionary 

Saturday was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, bike days I've had so far. A conservative estimate from my GPS says it was about 30 miles. We were able to meet with a recent convert, Jamesly, who has his mission papers in! He's the only member in his family, but he wants his mom and little brother to get baptized before he goes. We'll be working more closely with him to help him with everything for that. Then in the evening we biked down to the bottom of our area to stop by a part-member family only to find that they had moved, so we spent the rest of the night biking back home. It was a pretty long day haha...

Yesterday was a really fun day though, there is a young woman in our ward going on a mission to Long Beach California, and she gave a great farewell talk. Her sister and her dad also sang a song together that was really good. Then after church we got to go to the open house, which was basically right on the beach! You couldn't see it from their house though, otherwise I would've gotten some awesome pictures. It was an interesting experience, this is the second missionary farewell I've witnessed while on my mission. It's weird to think that I'm old enough in the mission now that I'll get back home 6 months before her!

That's pretty much all the news from this week, I'm gonna try to go out and see the eclipse that's going on! We had someone we knocked into last night tell us that it's a sign that the world is ending  haha, we'll see about that I guess. Interviews with President are already this week, and we also got our date for going to the temple, which will be Sept. 8th! Just a head's up, for that week that Friday will be my p-day, so just be aware that I didn't forget to email haha. Anyways hope all is going well with you! Keep up the good work!

​My new district, the "Salt Life" district​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

PS (Answers for Dad)

Naples is definitely a little tougher to find people than my other areas, definitely more biking, and even though the ward is more like a twig than a branch the people that do come are solid. Elder Blood is great. I use my creole a lot just talking to people, saying prayers, and doing things for the ward members.

Kind of a Long Week

​Here's a selfie of me soaked through after biking in the rain!

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty average, felt kinda long to be honest. There's not a whole lot of updates, but here are a couple highlights.

The weather has been kinda crazy this week, it's either 90deg or 90deg and raining haha. We've still been doing lots of biking, still averaging about 25 miles a day. It's definitely taking it's toll but I'll get in the groove eventually.

We did our English class again this week, and it took some struggling but we had a couple come! We've been trying to work with them for a while, it's just hard to meet because they don't really have a house and have to walk everywhere. Kinda a weird situation, but they love meeting with us and want to learn English too so that was good. We taught just a basic introduction, kinda in MTC style where we talked in English the whole class. We taught them some phrases like "Hello! It is nice to meet you! What is your name? My name is... How are you? I am fine. Where do you live? I live on..." as well as the alphabet and numbers 1-20. It was a fun class, hopefully we can really get this going.

We've been struggling a lot to get investigators to come to church, this week no one came. We had to drop our only investigator with a baptismal date because she's going back to Haiti. We did find one cool family, Darline and Frank and Lisa, and we knew they couldn't come to church but when we showed up for our appointment yesterday no one was home. Kind of a bummer since we biked an hour to get there, and hopefully we don't completely lose contact because they are very interested.

Another side-fact about Naples: our ward is made up of almost entirely "snowbirds", meaning they stay here during the winter but leave during summer. So this being the off season, we only have like 30 members in our ward. An interesting situation for sure.

That's really all that's going on, we spend most of our days biking and knocking when all our appointments fall through haha. 

Hope all is well with you! Thanks for your support!

​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Holy Biking Batman!

Pic from Elder Webster

Hello everyone! This week has been an exhausting one, that's for sure. Mostly because of all the biking I've been doing. On average we bike around 25 miles per day, but depending where we go it could easily top 30. Naples as a city is already spread out, so you can imagine what it's like trying to get to Haitian spots. Our main spot is about an hour and a half away if we don't stop. If I'm not mistaken it's the largest bike area in the mission. Great for my first time biking in over a year! Needless to say I'm still pretty slow and I've had to dramatically change my lifestyle, but hey if that's what it takes. Hopefully that all doesn't sound complainy hahaha! 

This week we had our first interviews with president Garns. It was mostly just for him to get to know us better. We struck it off pretty well once he found out I'm from Simi. Most of the time was spent talking about the great stake presidents we have. Didn't get to ask any questions really but that's ok, I'll just ask them in my email today.

Our zone also had 4 baptisms this week, and Elder Dick got to interview all of them! One was from our district and the others were for the ZLs, so it was a busy night for him. 

As far as people we're teaching, we're still trying to work with Janette even though she didn't come to church, and she still has some concerns we're working to overcome, so we'll see how that goes. Also just last night we found another person named Iglesia (yes, she is Haitian). She's the sister of another person that Elder Dick found on exchange and taught the restoration to. Apparently she was pretty cool, and her sister is pretty cool too! We're excited to work with them, even though they live in that hour and a half away place haha.

Other than that, not too much else happened. After sacrament yesterday one of the Haitian members came us to us and said "can you teach the class, my dad isn't here." Of course we were like "...Sure!" So Elder Dick and I taught a lesson about Gifts of the Spirit. A lesson that can definitely go awry with Haitians hahaha. It went well though, everyone stayed pretty much on topic which was great. We also had a visitor in the class. We tried to see her yesterday evening but didn't end up having enough time to get there. Bummer.

Oh and I almost forgot, as we were biking home last night Elder Dick got a flat tire just shortly after we started! So we patched it up and the ZLs came and drove us back home. I was very grateful that I got to take the 20 minute drive instead of the hour and a half bike ride late at night. 

Another biking related incident I almost forgot about: The other day we were biking home at night (fortunately we were closer to home) and we went through a golf course to take a short cut. Elder Dick was in front and I was doing my best to keep up (golf courses actually have HILLS, what are those? haha) but somehow I biked past him at the spot where we were supposed to get off. 

I ended up following the trail, hoping that Elder Dick was somewhere ahead. I get to a fork in the path and I look at my GPS (which was pretty useless since golf courses aren't really mapped) and pick a path to go. Shortly thereafter the path stopped. I turned around and went the other way, and got to another fork. I picked a way and the path stopped again. I went the other way and made it out at the top of the course. 

I bike across a parking lot to get to the road, look at my GPS to plan my route home and just as I put it away and am about to start, the ZLs pull up in their mini van and honk and flash their lights at me. Perfect timing. Elder Dick had called President as soon as he knew I was lost, and the ZLs were driving around to find me. So everything worked out, and I made sure Elder Dick didn't beat himself up too bad about it either haha. I believe there are many lessons that can be learned from this story, I'd love to hear of the ones you find! Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson